Maybe I was one of the lucky ones. I live in an ancient house that I bought in 1978 and still drive my first car (’55 Ford Fairlane) daily. Obviously the house was paid off decades ago, and the car was purchased for cash on the spot, back in 1972 when I was 16, so I cant remember what it was like to have a loan payment to make each month.
Through the year as utility rate hikes and other forms of inflation took effect, I found ways to cut costs by lowering my standard of living in an effort to keep from going into the red. Here in the “black-and-blue” State of illinois, we had a 66% income tax increase, which I will need to pay on Jan 15th. In 2010 I became an independent consultant as many companies around continued to downsize. So, now, I have absolutely no benefits and became unable to obtain health insurance. However I was able to get a lot of work with a small company thru 2010 and 2011. Prior to the economic downturn, I earned $25.00 per hour working direct, full-time for a company. I agreed to work for $18.00 per hour for the small company I am now working for, so income has dropped drastically. However, an accounting of my 2011 receivables and expenditures shows that even though I had only earned about $12,000 for the year 2011, I still saved about $2000 over the year.
Some of the things I did to cut expenditures include:
Disconnecting power to the garage, except when power was needed.
Unplugging lamps and appliances when not in use.
Use a portable electric heater during winter to reduce natural gas usage. I got a substantially lower utility bill from doing this.
Discontinued cable TV service.
Discontinued land-line telephone service. Thats a savings of $396/year. Now I use Majic-Jack for my phone service. It only costs $20/year (all calls are free).
The drawback to that is; I power-down my computer when it is not in use, so you cannot place calls on the phone, but it will take a message if incoming calls occur during the time the computer is off.
During the warm weather months I planted a vegetable garden. I never needed to buy any vegetables at the grocery while the garden was producing, and I actually gave away more than I used myself. I tilled the garden myself with an old roto-tiller, and the seeds only cost a couple bucks, so I was able to substantially reduce my grocery bill. But it was A LOT of work keeping the garden in good shape.
I do all my home and car repairs myself, so there was no need for emergency spending if something broke. The week before Christmas, my ’55 Ford carburator got clogged up. It took me 5 minutes to remove the carb, 15 more minutes to take it apart and anothr 15 to clean it. I didnt spend any money fixing the carb, but I did spend a couple bucks on a new gas filter.
Meanwhile, my neighbors 10 year old car broke down and costed him over $1000 to get it fixed not counting the towing charge. So, am I the lucky one? If so, I can’t find anyone who would give you a plug nickel for my house or my junk car either one.
In 2011, my earnings and standard of living decreased drastically, but I am still in the black for now. I have been wanting to move to find new opportunity elsewhere (out of illinois), but I am stuck until the housing market starts gaining some ground again. A lot of people are in the same boat. They cant move unless they are willing to lose tens of thousands of dollars in the equity they have in their current home. It is impossible to make-up that kind of a loss in this economy.
In summary, 2011 seems like a year that stood still for me. Despite all the effort, I was unable to make much measurable gain financially. But the larger damage, was due to the 35% loss I suffered during the market crash of ’08 in my retirement funds. I bailed out of the market and have kept what I had left in money market funds ever since, so theres been no increase in the value of my funds, but I have felt that the stock market has been much too volatile to get back into.
2012 will be one more year of 0bamas failed economic policies and a huge loss for the American people. I am NOT looking forward to 2012 ! We must put conservative Republicans in every branch of govt we can in Nov 2012. I cannot see at this point how I can continue to hold my own for another four more years of campaigner-in-cheif 0bama.